Watch
by QuibbleMeThis
Summary: Three days into the Summer holidays two wizards take their turn watching a house in Privet Drive.


**Disclaimer - I own nothing. Nothing at all.**

 **Just a little oneshot scenario I came up with. Do with it what you will.**

/()/()/()/()/)

Three days into the Summer holidays two wizards take their turn watching a house in Privet Drive. So far the watchers have seen the Husband, Wife and Son, but other than a brief glimpse when the family returned from Kings Cross station, they have not seen the one they are supposed to be watching.

On the morning of the third day, a Saturday, the Husband, Wife and Son all leave together, apparently planning to spend the day at a fun-park as a treat for the son and a few of his friends. There is still no sign of the fourth occupant. After the three have driven away the watchers argue quietly for a few minutes before turning invisible. The front door to the house briefly swings open and then closes again.

The two ghost silently through the quiet house. Even the walls show no hint of their target, just endless photographs of the three muggles who had left. Finding no sign of him on the ground floor they are about to ascend the stairs when they hear a sharp clicking noise from the floor above and freeze. A few seconds later the noise repeats. And again. And again. And again. Then the sound of a door opening followed by the footsteps of someone walking with an odd shuffling gait.

A figure appears at the top of the stairs and both of the intruders are grateful for the charms which silence their shocked gasps. It is Harry Potter, but as they have never seen him before. Both his eyes are blackened and his cheeks and chin are bruised and swollen. One of his arms is bound to his chest in a makeshift sling and his other arm sports several contusions. They cannot see his legs, covered by his oversized jeans, but from the way the boy is limping they can guess the damage extends there as well.

The boy considers the stairway and the banister, which is on the same side as his bound arm, mutters to himself a bit, then gingerly lowers himself so he is sitting on the top stair and scoots down on his backside. Once he reaches the foot of the stairs he laboriously hauls himself back to his feet and limps slowly around until he is standing swaying in front of the cupboard under the stairs, which the two observers notice is secured with a large padlock. He reaches forward, lays his hand on the padlock and closes his eyes. Several seconds later there is another sharp 'Click' as the padlock releases and both men recognise the sound they heard before.

Potter opens the cupboard door and leans in. They hear a clicking, a quiet thud, rustling and the boy straightens up holding a wooden box. He leaves the cupboard and resumes his limping journey down the hallway and into the kitchen. The two spies silently drift after him glancing curiously in the cupboard as they pass to see an open school trunk sitting among the mops, brooms and vacuum cleaner.

In the kitchen the boy sets the box on the table and opens it. It is full of potions and Potter swiftly selects one vial and downs the contents. Moments later he lets out a small groan of relief as the pain reliever takes effect. He next pulls out a tub labeled 'bruise balm' and gently applies it to his face, causing the swelling to recede and the purple to slowly fade to a dull green.

Over the next hour the pair watch as the teenager slowly but competently patches himself up. Balms and creams are spread and bruises and sprains are healed. Potions are consumed, wounds close and the boy gradually returns himself to a relatively healthy condition.

While he is occupied one of the watchers wanders upstairs, curious about the five locks they heard being released before the boy appeared. He finds his answer. Five deadbolts and a cat flap adorn one of the four bedroom doors, and the room beyond, with its faded paint and rundown furniture is a squalid contrast to the otherwise pristine house. The floor and walls are flecked with splatters of what the observer recognises as dried blood. He shakes his head incredulously and returns below, gesturing for his companion to go and look for himself.

Once Potter is as healed as he can make himself the boy moves on to another task. He investigates the contents of the fridge and pantry with a considering look on his face before making himself a sandwich, carefully not taking much of any one item and arranging the remainder so that it looks as though nothing had been taken at all. Once he has eaten he cleans up thoroughly and leaves the kitchen looking exactly as it did before his arrival.

The teen walks through the house into what appears to be some kind of office and approaches a desk with a grim look on his face.

'Alright' he mutters touching his fingers to a locked drawer, 'Lets see what DumDum has scheduled for me this Summer. Heavier beatings, obviously, but what else?'

With a soft click the drawer unlocks and Potter pulls it open to reveal a file folder and a wand. He opens the folder to reveal a stack of letters written on good quality parchment in a graceful flowing script. The boy picks up the topmost letter and begins to read. Halfway through he blanches, drops the letter and bolts from the room, the watchers barely managing to dodge out of his way in time. Moments later they hear him retching horribly in the downstairs bathroom.

Curiously one of the pair stoops and picks up the abandoned letter and begins to read, his partner stepping close and shamelessly reading over his shoulder.

 _Mr Dursley_

 _I trust this letter finds you and your family in good health._

 _Mr Potter will be returning to your home on Friday the Third of June. The train will be arriving at Kings Cross at 5pm and you should be waiting to claim him at this time. Do not be late._

 _As I have previously stated I found your handling of Mr Potter to be inadequate the last time he was under your care. I requested that you break his spirit, yet he returned to us as wilful and stubbornly uncontrollable as he was when he left. My own efforts this year, hampered as I am by the scrutiny of the public eye, have also been ineffective. Therefore I must insist on the use of extreme measures while he is in your custody._

 _The beatings must not only continue, they must increase in strength and frequency. Do not kill him, he is useless to me dead, but bring him as close to that state as you can, for as long as you can. Minor bone breaks and fractures are fine. Likewise reduce his food consumption to the bare minimum._

 _However given his stubborn resilience I believe that this alone is unlikely to give the results I seek. Therefore I give you permission to use the boy carnally, as you have so often requested. Take him, degrade him, humiliate him, break him. I need his mind to be utterly crushed in order to completely control him. The control I wish to implement is ineffective against the excessively strong willed._

 _In order for you to accomplish this task I will ensure that he remains with you for the entire summer. Term starts September Fifth. You will be required to bring him to Kings Cross station before 11pm on that date. Please ensure that he is able to walk with no obvious wounds. I will be able to prevent him from talking._

 _Your salary will be deposited into your usual account on the usual date. Succeed in your task to my satisfaction and you will receive a generous bonus._

 _Regards_

 _A D_

Numbly the one holding the letter allows it to drop back to the floor as they look at each other in shock. A D. Albus Dumbledore. The leader of the light, and self proclaimed 'good guy' was condoning, no encouraging, no ordering the abuse and rape of Harry Potter! This was beyond anything they had expected. The supposed saviour, Dumbledores 'golden boy', instead of the coddled and indulged summer idyll they had expected they had stumbled across the exact opposite. A hell as bad as Azkaban, done up in floral and pastel and sugared over with a veneer of muggle 'normality'. And it would appear that this was occurring on Dumbledores orders in an effort to weaken the child. Did he intend to use the imperius curse? It was well known that it was useless against Potter. Not even the Dark Lord could force that boy to act against his will.

As one they followed after the teenager. So far he had shown an unexpected level of resourcefulness, and it hadn't escaped their notice that the opening of the locks had been performed without a wand which was evidence of a level of power and skill the boy had never previously demonstrated. How long had he known that Dumbledore was his enemy?

They found him pacing in the sitting room, muttering wildly. 'Gotta get out. There has to be a way out. I need to leave... I can't leave. I woudn't make it one day before He caught me and dragged me back and made it even worse. Stupid tracking charms. Stupid underage magic laws. Stupid DumDum... ok, ok, ok... calm down Harry. Breathe.' he stopped in the middle of the room, closed his eyes, took a deep breath and slowly released it.

'Ok. This doesn't change anything. The plan can still work. You knew it would probably be worse this summer. The stakes are higher than you expected, but it can still work. It will work. As long as He avoids getting his hands dirty and confronting me directly I can work around him. One more year. I just have to survive one more year. Once I turn seventeen I can make a run for it. I can do this... I can do this...'

Still pale but no longer panicking he strode determinedly back to the cupboard containing his trunk and pulled out a small bundle wrapped in a ragged old t-shirt from a pile of equally ragged clothes. The bundle was opened to reveal a medium sized bottle, a diamond tipped rune-engraver and a scrap of parchment which appeared to contain several rune sequences.

The boy set the scribe and parchment aside and carried the bottle out to the kitchen where he proceeded to use the contents to thoroughly contaminate as much food as he could with what the watchers eventually realised was concentrated calming draught. It was sprinkled over vegetables, bread, cheese and lunch meat, stirred through the sugar and instant coffee, dripped into the milk, juice, fizzy drink and even wiped over the mouth of the many beer cans sitting in the fridge. Then he moved on to the pantry working his way through breakfast cereals, rice and pasta until it was certain that, no matter what they ate, the Dursleys would always get at least some of the potion in each meal for a long time to come. He even placed a drop on every piece of cutlery, crockery and cup.

The dark haired observer nodded in reluctant approval. The constant small doses of calming draught would make the muggles entirely passive and unaggressive and it was almost impossible to overdose on the stuff. They might wind up drooling a bit, but by that point they wouldn't care. Since the dose needed to be larger to affect a wizard it wouldn't bother Potter much if he ate the food himself, and even if the boy somehow got caught, well, there was nothing illegal about what he was doing. Nobody was going to arrest him for dosing muggles with calming draught, the worst he'd get would be a mild reprimand.

Once he was done with the food he returned the still half full bottle to his trunk and took up the rune engraver and the scrap of parchment. He approached the front door and, regularly consulting the parchment, he painstakingly carved several rune sequences around the edge of the doorframe. Once he was done he took a deep breath placed his forefinger on each rune and activated them one by one. Without a wand. The watching pair glanced at each other in reluctant admiration. Activating a single rune was easy enough but activating multiple runes took power. Doing it without a wand would take even more power. Whatever else he may be Harry Potter was certainly not a weak wizard.

Once the boy was done with the front door he went and repeated the process on the back door. And then the doorway to the kitchen, the sitting room and two bedrooms and bathroom upstairs. The fair haired spy, who knew a bit about runes, took a look at the finished front doorframe and was, again, reluctantly impressed, especially since, as far as he was aware, the boy didn't actually take Ancient Runes at Hogwarts. The runes were a subtle little sequence which would encourage non-aggression in whomever passed through the doorway, and further induce them to forget about and ignore anyone who bore a specific mark on their person, the mark specified being the famous scar on the teenagers forehead. Again, nothing illegal, nothing the boy could get in trouble for, but very cleverly tailored to keep the boy safe from the other occupants of the house. They were remarkably effective too. Even knowing the runes were there he found himself, after passing through a newly warded doorway, struggling to remember why they were in the house, until his companion slapped him up the back of the head and hissed 'Occlude, you dunderhead!'.

Finally the now tired looking boy reached the door frame to his own room. Here, the watchers noticed, he turned his scrap of parchment over and inscribed a different, more complicated set of runes around the doorframe. The blonde soon realised that these were a standard set of muggle notice-me-not runes, much like the ones that hid the exterior of the Leaky Cauldron from being noticed by the thousands of Muggles who walked past it every day, combined with exclusion runes which denied entry to anyone who did not bear that scar. So even if the Muggles managed to overcome the calming draught and the anti-aggression runes, even if they somehow remembered he was in the house, they would not be able to find his bedroom door and even if they did they would not be able to get in. Potter would have a safe refuge. Multiple failsafes which worked together but did not rely on each other. This was a level of foresight and planning, of intelligence, that they had previously not thought the boy capable of.

As the evening sun peeked through the windows and stained the floor with gold they watched as the boy activated his last rune-ward then packed his tools back into his trunk. They watched as he made himself another two sandwiches, ate them, and made sure the kitchen was spotless once more. They watched as he hid the box of healing potions, an invisibility cloak and several books under a loose floorboard in his room. They watched as he returned to the office and scowlingly retrieved the letter from where it lay on the floor. They watched as he walked over to a machine, laid the letter flat on a glass pane and pressed a button causing the device to whirr and chug and flash and spit out a perfect copy of the letter on muggle paper. They watched as he put the original letter back in the file, returned the file to the drawer and wandlessly locked it. They watched as he slipped the copied letter down between the lining of his trunk, shut the lid, and then closed and locked the cupboard door. They watched as he ascended the stairs, so much more easily than he had descended them that morning. They listened as he shut the door to his bedroom.

They watched as the Husband and Wife and Son drove into the driveway and exited the car. They watched as the trio walked through the front door and the sharp edge of spitefulness suddenly faded from their eyes. They watched as they trooped into the kitchen and the wife served her husband a beer, her son a fizzy drink and herself a glass of juice and their faces slackened into mindless serenity. They watched as the son guzzled his third glass of Fanta and started to drool.

They watched as the family turned in for the night, walking past the door with the locks as though it wasn't there. They watched as the lights went out. They left the house as silently as they had entered it and walked away. They had a lot to report.

/()

Through the barred window on the second floor sharp green eyes watched as a blonde aristocrat and a dark haired potions master stepped into a shadow and vanished with a crack.

/()/()/()/()/()/)

 **Well that's it. I hope you enjoyed it. Yes it's supposed to be raise more questions than it answers and, no, I won't be taking it any further. It's just a scenario that took up residence in my head and demanded to be written down, so I'm using this as an experiment with ambiguity. I would love to hear your interpretation of what is happening here, what has happend before and will happen after this scene. I know what _I_ think is happening, but I'm very curious about how much of that I've managed to get across... so reviews will be especially appreciated for this one.**

 **For those who wish to know, I haven't abandoned Hidden Kingdom, I'm just having a bit of trouble with the next chapter. Harry is not co-operating. He's chained himself to a tree and is straight up refusing to go to Hogwarts...**


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